Friday, April 13, 2012

Jackie Robinson Day and the Decline of Black Baseball Players

As major
league baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson Day on Sunday, it is remarkable that
the number of African Americans in baseball has fallen from a quarter of all
players during the mid-1970s to 8.5 percent in 2011(Ruck, Raceball, 177; “2011 Race and Gender Report Card,” p. 1). Indeed, Hispanics have surpassed blacks as
the largest minority in the game and there is little sign that the number of
African Americans playing in the majors will increase anytime soon. Though the
integration of baseball was a seminal event in the civil rights movement, most young
blacks going into professional sports today seem to prefer basketball and
football.

It was
not always this way. During the first
half of the 20th century, the major leagues were segregated, but
baseball was at the center of black culture.
After players and owners drew the color line in the 1890s, a number of
independent teams such as the Cuban Giants continued the tradition of
African-American baseball. With the
Great Migration of blacks to the North during World War I, a fan and consumer
base emerged capable of supporting a league. Organized under the leadership of former
pitcher Rube Foster in 1920, the Negro Leagues became one of a number of
African-American institutions that sustained black life under Jim Crow. Though they often labored in obscurity
compared to their white contemporaries, players such as catcher Josh Gibson and
pitcher Satchel Paige were among the best in the sport in the 1930s and 40s,
even if they never played in the majors (Gibson) or didn’t during their prime
(Paige)

After
struggling during the Depression, the Negro Leagues thrived during World War
II, as a number of forces laid the groundwork for integration. The fight
against fascism and Nazi racism abroad exposed the contradictions between
American rhetoric and American practice.
Black sportswriters agitated for major league teams to sign black
players, with help from liberal politicians and the Communist Party. The passing of Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain
Landis in 1944, who had long held the line on segregation, opened the door for
change. Brooklyn Dodgers’ GM Branch
Rickey walked through it when he signed Jackie Robinson, then playing for the
Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues, to a contract in 1945.

When
Robinson played his first game as a Dodger on April 15, 1947, he debuted a year
before President Truman integrated the military and nearly a decade before the
epochal civil rights landmarks of Brown
v. Board of Education and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Robinson faced incredible racism in his early
years in the league, but excelled, paving the way for a parade of black stars
in subsequent years, including Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. As a result, the Negro Leagues declined and disbanded. Not every
team quickly followed Brooklyn’s lead, however, as the Boston Red Sox only
became the final team to integrate in 1959.
While black players entered the league, there were no African American
managers or coaches in the majors during this time, as the end of the Negro
Leagues meant the loss of opportunities for blacks in these positions.

The 1960s
and 70s were the heyday of African American participation in the majors as well
as the game’s popularity in black America.
As ESPN’s Michael Wilbon recalled, “The talk in the barbershop wasn’t of
Wilt and Russell nearly as much as it was of Aaron and Mays.” (Washington Post, April 14, 2007) In the face of racism and death threats in
1974, Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record. The percentage of blacks in the major leagues
reached an all-time high of 27 percent the following year as 16 black players, comprising 40 percent of all non-pitchers, played in the 1975 All-Star Game (Ruck,
177-178).

The
change seemed to begin in the 1980s as other sports emerged. The National Basketball Association (NBA) had
nearly gone bankrupt during the disco era, in part because some viewers and
advertisers saw the league as “too black.”
The merger with the American Basketball Association (ABA) in 1976
brought Julius “Dr. J” Erving into the league, reviving it, followed by the arrival
of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, whose rivalry helped make it comparable to
football and baseball in terms of popularity.
The arrival of Michael Jordan then sent the league into a stratosphere
by the 1990s, with millions of young black (and white) kids wanting “to be like
Mike.”

Football
grew and surpassed baseball in popularity while featuring plenty of black
players on the field, but there was one major position that remained closed to
African Americans as late as the 1980s—quarterback. Racial stereotypes suggested that blacks did
not have the intelligence and leadership skills to run an NFL offense. It was routine for pro coaches to move a black
college quarterback to another position after he was drafted. Those that insisted on playing QB had to
leave for the Canadian Football League (CFL), as future Hall of Famer Warren
Moon did for several years in the early 1980s.

The Washington
Redskins’ Doug Williams punctured this myth when he threw five touchdown passes
in a victorious MVP performance in Super Bowl XXII in 1988. In the following years, Donovan McNabb, Steve
McNair, and others achieved success as quarterbacks. The Atlanta Falcons and Oakland Raiders
drafted Michael Vick and Jamarcus Russell 1st overall in the NFL Draft
in 2001 and 2007, respectively, something that would have been inconceivable as
late as the 1990s. Though black QBs do
not yet face a completely even playing field, they are unlikely to be forced to
change roles anymore. The opportunity to
play the prestige position has encouraged more young African Americans to
pursue football at the expense of baseball.

The
number of blacks in the game remained reasonably high, as there was a lag before
declining youth participation impacted the percentage of African Americans
playing the game. As late as the mid-1990s, there were still as many blacks as
Latinos in the majors and Ken Griffey, Jr. and Barry Bonds competed for the title
of “best player in the game, ” though their choice of the sport was no doubt
influenced by the fact that they were both the sons of star players.

For the
most part, it appears the decline of black players reflects greater sports
options rather than discrimination. Both
college basketball and football hold out the promise for earlier stardom than
college baseball, and there are far more scholarship possibilities for the
former than the latter. Under Commissioner Bud Selig, major league baseball has
made great efforts to rejuvenate the game in urban areas through its Revive
Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI) program.
Still, some African-American players, such as the Los Angeles Angels’ Torri
Hunter, have complained that management’s search for Latin players comes partly
out of a desire for a cheaper and more malleable work force.

As
players take the field with Robinson’s historic 42 on their back, there will be
relatively few African Americans in the lineup or on the mound, though nearly
40 percent of the participants will be people of color (2011 Race and Gender
Report Card, p.2). Indeed, no sport better reflects the multiculturalism of
today’s US more than baseball with its large Latino and Asian contingents. Without Jackie Robinson’s courage 65 years
ago, the contemporary diversity of the sport would be inconceivable.

Sources:
Rob Ruck, Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black
and Latin Game (Beacon Press, 2011)

“2011
Race and Gender Report Card,” The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in
Sports.